Editor’s Note: In honor of our new retrospective on the life of Henry Lowenstein , (click here), we are re-posting John Moore’s March 20, 2005, look back at the history of the Bonfils Theatre.

Long before the creation of the Denver Center Theatre Company,
Denver’s premier theater was staged at the Bonfils Memorial Theater
at East Colfax Avenue and Elizabeth Street.

Over 33 years, the Bonfils’ seductive stage called out to everyone from New York celebrities to a state Supreme Court justice to a future Miss America to legions of ordinary folk. It even saw the occasional streaker and bomb threat.

It was a community theater that was professionally run.

When former Denver Post publisher Helen Bonfils built her 550-seat theater palace as a memorial to her parents, it was the first new live theater built anywhere in Denver in 40 years. It soon became the epicenter of Denver society.

By the time it closed in 1986 as the Lowenstein Theater, it had hosted more than 400 mainstage and children’s productions. Its legacy includes a summer festival caravan that toured city parks, a free annual outdoor summer musical in Cheesman Park and a black-box cabaret. Its long list of legendary directors includes Alexander Ivo, Robert Wells, Harry Geldard, Bob Bannister, Buddy Butler, Bev Newcomb-Madden and Gary Montgomery, nephew of British military hero Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

The building has sat unoccupied for 19 years, but a new plan to turn the Lowenstein into a cultural retail center only made what had been long assumed now obvious: While the building’s exterior will be preserved, this beloved gem’s days as a performance venue are over.

The current plan calls for the Tattered Cover Book Store to take over the existing theater, while the Denver Film Society and Twist & Shout records will operate in a new facility to be built next door.

The Bonfils story includes actors collapsing onstage and being bailed out of jail just before curtain. There are tales of ghosts and hookers both being shooed away by diligent house manager Joe Farrow. Onstage, the canon included antiwar stories, cautionary tales of nuclear destruction and some of the first staged works with homosexual characters (“Boys in the Band”), all playing opposite professionally staged children’s stories like “Pippi Longstocking” and “Golliwhoppers.”

In honor of a closed chapter in the city’s history, The Post asked longtime producer Henry Lowenstein and many of those who performed there for their memories.

Lowenstein remembers the theater as “one of the best-designed and best-equipped theater buildings that existed at the time.” For many actors, Michael Gold said, “it was the start of our careers. And it was all good theater with the sole purpose of entertainment.”

For untold millions of Coloradans, the Bonfils served as their first experience in live theater. And for many of their grandchildren as well.

The Bonfils Theatre: A brief history

1929: University Civic Theatre opens with “Candida” at University of Denver’s Margaret Reed Hall.

1953: Helen Bonfils builds the new 550-seat Bonfils Memorial Theatre, the first new theater building in Denver in 40 years. She names it Denver Civic Theatre at the Bonfils Memorial Theatre.

1956: Henry Lowenstein is hired as set designer.

1966: Donald R. Seawell named CEO of The Denver Post and supervisor of the Bonfils.

1967: Lowenstein is named producer.

1972: Helen Bonfils dies.

1985: Renamed the Lowenstein Theater.

1986: Theater closed by unanimous vote of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts board of trustees, chaired by Seawell

Ten unforgettable events in the theater’s history

1. When the Bonfils Memorial Theatre opened in October 1953, millionaire Broadway producer Blevins Davis (“Porgy & Bess”) called it the finest theater of its kind in the country. “There is nothing better in New York,” he said. A congratulatory telegram was sent to founder Helen Bonfils by president Dwight D. Eisenhower. “All of Denver society would show up for every opening night, presided over by Miss Helen, who would walk to her seat as the audience applauded her,” said former theater critic Thom Wise. “The society writers would cover, in detail, what all of the prominent women would wear, and who sat next to whom. In those days, the Bonfils Theater was the social center of the city.”

2. Tragedy struck in 1954. During the intermission of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” a crew member fell from 18 feet up the stalk and down through an open trap door to his death. A shaken Bonfils was determined “she better have someone in there who knew what they were doing,” said producer Henry Lowenstein. “And that’s how I got hired.”

3. People still buzz about the night Carol Channing attended “Sorrows of Stephen” in 1982 and hung out with the cast for hours afterward. But nothing topped a 1955 tribute to Denver playwright Mary Chase. She was being honored after a performance of her “Harvey” when Jimmy Stewart, the star of the film version, emerged from the back row; he had watched the entire performance unnoticed.

4. In 1957, Judge O. Otto Moore, chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, played the William Jennings Bryan-inspired role in the Scopes Monkey Trial drama “Inherit the Wind.” “We all thought that issue was finally behind us, and look what’s going on now,” Lowenstein said. “Here we are 50 years later and the issue is as alive as ever.”

5. In a 1965 production of “Dark of the Moon,” a backwoods Ozarks preacher rapes a woman as townspeople crowd around, shielding the audience from view. Lowenstein was prepared for the worst when he was summoned to the lobby to face a preacher who had an unexpected agenda. “He said, ‘I have a couple here who really wanted to see your show before they leave on their honeymoon. But they haven’t been married yet. Since you already have the lectern set up, can we marry them onstage here?’ They got married right then and there, with all my staff as witnesses. It was absolutely wonderful.”

6. The new “Perry Mason” series was filmed inside the Bonfils from 1987-89, among many other Denver locales. Raymond Burr was a consultant to Helen Bonfils on the original design of her theater. That’s why he chose to film his series there, Wise said.

7. A large portrait of “Miss Helen” graced the building’s foyer. The newspaper magnate’s first love was the theater. She would spend most theater seasons in New York as an actor and producer. She summered in Denver with her husband, George Somnes, who produced and directed plays at the Elitch Theatre. After her death in 1972, many Bonfils regulars became convinced that in her portrait, the sky behind Bonfils would grow gloomier if the current show were one she would not have liked.

8. In 1971, 23-year-old Kevin Kline was joined by David Ogden Stiers, Patti LuPone, Mary Lou Rosato and others from John Houseman’s The Acting Company to perform three shows in repertory for three weeks. Lowenstein fondly remembers driving the young stars in his beat-up Scout through a blizzard to the Career Education Center, where they conducted a workshop for children. Kline came back for at least two other runs at the Bonfils in the 1970s.

9. In 1971, 10 days before an opening night, Lowenstein canceled a production of “The Imaginary Invalid,” being staged in conjunction with the University of Denver. After four months of rehearsal, it was looking like a disaster. “I was the bad guy,” said Lowenstein, who then rushed “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Becket” into simultaneous production so that the entire cast of the canceled show would have parts. But that didn’t quell the animosity. Opening night was canceled by a bomb threat. Then the next night as well. “By the third night I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. They can close us forever if we do this night after night,”‘ he said. That night a threatening note was found in a dressing room with letters cut from a magazine. “It was pretty clear that somebody in the cast was involved,” Lowenstein said. “But I said, ‘I don’t give a damn. This show is going on. I am willing to risk it.”‘ Neither show, it turns out, was a bomb.

10. Lowenstein considers Robert Wells’ 1983 production of “Sweeney Todd” the theater’s greatest artistic achievement. “That was the one show I would say absolutely got it right,” he said. “Everything about it was the way it should be.” It was the highlight of Wells’ 35-show run as well. “It was a knockout,” he said. Three years later, the theater closed.